Modern disc drives are designed to operate within a predetermined range of environmental conditions. These conditions are chosen based on a number of factors such as normal expected handling activities, ambient and operational temperatures expected, and atmospheric pressures. These ranges are relatively broad, with the intention of accommodating the most expected conditions of use. Such ranges are also a balance between expectations and design constraints. However, in actual practice, operation of the drives can and does occur outside these ranges, as the manufacturer has no control over the ultimate use by the customer in most cases.
If drive operation occurs outside of the envelope of these expected environmental conditions, the drive is subjected to an “environmental stress”. In such conditions, data written to the storage discs may not be accurately recorded or sufficiently recorded to permit accurate and consistent reads. Examples of such stress conditions are operation of the disc drive within a poorly ventilated PC system or surviving a cold boot in a poorly radiated storeroom during the deep of winter. Another example of environmental stress condition is excessive vibration.
Operating mobile hard disc drives must withstand consistent shock and vibration. In these drives, there is internal hardware protection of the drive to minimize the occurrence of drive fatality, i.e. a head slamming onto disc media as a result of the drive coming into extreme physical contact against other object(s) such as might occur if the laptop is hit or dropped during operation. However this hardware protection does not guarantee or verify a valid write operation. It only potentially safeguards the drive from total malfunction.
Accordingly there is a need for a system and method for avoiding incorrect writing of data during environmental stress conditions. The present invention provides a solution to this and other problems, and offers other advantages over the prior art.